A 'Great British F**k Up': 3 Airline CEOs React to Heathrow Meltdown
Photo Credit: A notification on the London Tube about the closure of Heathrow due to a fire on March 21, 2025. Skift / Flora Clampet
Skift Take
One week on from a catastrophic power outage that led to the complete closure of London Heathrow, we hear three very different CEO perspectives on the chaos.
The planes and passengers are back in the sky, but the fallout from last Friday’s shutdown at Heathrow is rumbling on. A “significant power outage” at a nearby electrical substation resulted in the complete closure of the West London airport.
Operations returned to normal the following day, but not before 1,300 flights were canceled and the travel plans of more than 200,000 passengers disrupted.
Speaking on Thursday in some of his first public comments on the incident, Luis Gallego, CEO of airline group IAG, shared his perspective on the chaos: “I received a phone call that we needed to cancel all the flights. I was surprised to be honest that Heathrow didn’t have resilience for a situation like this, but they said it was impossible to operate.
"In some ways, it was easier to manage, because when you know you cannot operate, you know what you have to do."
IAG –
